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What are your thoughts and reflections on Blackboard

Posted January 5th, 2008 by chrishambly
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Some of you may recall the black day when the learning management software company Blackboard dot org decided to file for some fairly outrageous patents.

I registered the domain BoycottBlackboard.org on 2006-08-02, in direct response to the issue being raised amongst the members of the SecondLife Educators mailing list, which incidentally as of Oct 2007 had around 3.5K members… We (generally as a group) were horrified with this crass move by Blackboard, the incredulous sweeping manner of their patents, the utter disregard for prior art, the complete ignorant and falsity of their claims, and decided appropriate action was called for.

The petition itself, and the way in which it grew in force, can be seen as a classic example of how social media can move mountains, just looking at all the names and institutions on the petition is proof of that, and do go ahead and look.

Though I’d never claim sole responsibility for helping change their mind, the petition did however get heard, there is no doubt about it Blackboard took note of the academic community and changed their stance on the patents and dreamed up the "The Blackboard Patent Pledge". Of course if your learning management software is not open source, all that has no meaning, tough luck!

In fact they changed many of the ludicrous ideas and released press releases stating so. The boycott blackboard petition has become part of the wiki entry for the history of the company, and I was personally interviewed for numerous educational publications concerning this.

But now some time has passed and I’m curious to know where you stand on this currently in terms of your feeling towards the company, and I’d appreciate it if you would post your comments up here.

Do you have any recent dealings with Blackboard, how do you feel, has it gone away now, has your anger depleted, have you forgotten the crime, are they excused??

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Comments

my RL University and Blackboard

On January 5th, 2008 Sorcs Nolan (not verified) says:

we are making plans to leave Blackboard for ANGEL. Blackboard's behaviors and actions since the announcement of their WebCT merger has been all and more of what we feared. Support has gone out the window, and we are no longer comfortable with the substandard product offered at comparatively high prices.

I didn't like what they were

On January 5th, 2008 Barbara (not verified) says:

I didn't like what they were doing, but I also assumed that I only knew what was printed. I thought the boycott was premature, and I dont' know if it really hurt. I remember the lettuce boycott decades ago and migrant workers are still at the bottom of the barrel because we can rely on so many illegals not reporting bad work conditions, or we can get produce from China and turn our heads.

We use the basic edition of Blackboard (can't imagine Angel or any other commercial product is morally higher) for about $12,500 a year and it requires no specialists to manage it, one person gives a small part of his job to install updates. We've looked at Moodle or other open source products, but our college doesn't invest in people, and that's what we would need to manage an open source solution. Where would we get a competent technologist to work full-time on our Moodle for $12,500?

Even though I think it's better to invest in people, I'm not in the upper administration.

I'm ready to abandon Blackboard, but I have to give the faculty something, and right now, Blackboard is it. I think it's easy to say this company is bad, let's boycott, but as we all know from labor battles, it's difficult for the least-fortunate who make up the working -class ranks to agree to suffer to make change.

The impact of the call to boycott Bb

On January 11th, 2008 R Perkins (not verified) says:

Had it not been for the discussion on the Second Life listserv about BlackBoard's egregious actions, I don't know how soon I would have heard about it. I had been using Bb since 1999, so I read their claims with interest. The patent claim was amazing enough, but to take an emerging company to court in a small Texas court was beyond all. When I signed the petition, I resolved to stop using Bb immediately. This benefited me a great deal - though I'm not sure if it impact Bb in any way whatsoever (who cares...) The Spring 2007 semester, I made all my students use a Sakai installation hosted by our university. I explained to them why: A) Bb's stupid decision and B) a chance to expose them (all pre-service teachers) to something that was not Bb. There is no doubt that Sakai needs some tweaking, but there were some features (like the wiki) that they enjoyed using.

Then, in summer 2007, I taught an online course for a university that had both Bb and Moodle. Since I wanted to learn Moodle better, I chose that option - and it was GREAT! I am a huge Moodle fan now. My students, though not too keen on changing LMS's at first, were all very grateful to have used Moodle - they were impressed, and some indicated on their end-of-course survey they found it nicer to use than the Bb installation. As the students are teachers in K12 systems across NC, the fact that it was as easy to use - and FREE - made a big impression on them. Should they be in a position to influence buyers, I would hope they would lean away from the very costly Bb option. This past December, I got a 20 minute overview of Angel, and I saw some things I liked there, as well. i have yet to dig in to Desire2Learn, but I saw those folks at NECC and at least encouraged them to keep on keepin' on.

Had it not been for my commitment to avoid Bb, I would not have gotten exposure to other important, useful LMS's. This semester, I'm doing another course (for yet a different uni), where I'm being "forced" to use Bb's WebCT Vista. I am deeply longing for Moodle, but it's too much to convert the instructor's pre-existing course. At least now I know what I'm missing!

Thanks, Chris, for registering the boycott site and encouraging our participation on it!

A couple of other notes...

On January 11th, 2008 R Perkins (not verified) says:

No, I haven't forgiven Bb, and they are not excused for being such toads. I will try to use Moodle or *anything* else when I have the ability/choice to do so. The only thing that will change my mind is if THEY drop the patent, drop the lawsuit (did they do this?) and apologize profusely. Even if the USPO reverses the patent, it doesn't undo their corporate greed and appalling lack of awareness of prior art.

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